I will be tackling this question in a new blog entry soon on my website. I always hear people express some band as the greatest ever but it is always when someone from said band is dead and usually only after their death they get that legacy.
The question I am wanting to answer is, while Nirvana was a good band for their time do they really deserve to be remembered as greatest of all time, or even a great band? On that note is it possible they aren't even great at all but actually quite terrible and we were all duped into thinking they were great because we got caught up in the whole whole 90's anti-80's-screw-fashion-lets-all-be-dirty-lazy-reckless-not give a **** attitude?
The real question I want to consider is not just were they actually good, that to me seems like the first obvious place to start. I then want to follow up with if they are good were they really as good as people make them out to be or if they weren't really that good how did we get duped into thinking they were? Don't get me wrong I had Nevermind, who didn't and I rocked out to it like all 90's teens did but I still think that there is a good chance they are not just over rated and over hyped but might actually have been a true fluke.
I will be examining this from the perspective of a long time question. What I have done is intentionally not allowed myself to listen to or be exposed to anything relating to Nirvana in almost a decade. I occasionally play their two big tracks Smells like Teen Spirit and Come as You are from time to time during appropriate sets of music experience but I have gone out of my way to remove them from my conscious as much as possible in an effort to be truly objective. I am hoping that I won't be tainted by nostalgia in this quest either because while they did rock hard in the early part of the decade, I was still heavy into Hip-Hop and gangsta rap then so I actually missed them during their peak and only heard about them after he killed himself, or his wife killed him whatever story you want to believe.
Anyways I can safely say that aside from rare occasions where it was inevitable I didn't actively listen to their music much but I did have their CD at one point and I gave it a complete play through when I was 16. Then I put it on the shelf and pretty much forgot about it, in reality as far as that type of rock music went I actually listened to Collective Soul self titled album far more than I ever did Nevermind. My favorite band of that era was actually Garbage followed closely by No Doubt so there is a good chance Nirvana was just too grunge or too I don't know fringe for me?
Anyways I plan on actually listening through each of their works including watching live performances of concerts if I can find the recordings as well as any music videos, MTV appearances, etc that I can dig up and will evaluate them both musically, culturally, as well as intellectually as a case study of music having an impact on our society.
This is not my first in depth query of this type, I actually wrote a comprehensive retrospective on the development and evolution of disco, funk and soul as it morphed into Hip-Hop/Rap, Techno/House, and Club/Dance music of today. I am sharing this here with music lovers who might be interested in checking out this piece when I have completed it.
I will try to do it as a blog editorial type piece but I will be looking at cultural impact and societal factors that might have helped contribute to the myth of this band if that makes any sense. Not that this sort of thing hasn't been explored before but this will be my take on it from the perspective of someone who was there at the time but really didn't get caught up in the music as much as the movement.
I will be using methods I have learned in critical thinking and anthropology courses as well as looking at it from a linguistics perspective which is where my major focus of study lies. I hope that this turns out to be en exciting journey and I look forward to sharing my findings with those who might be interested. This has been a long project coming. This will be a sub-series within a new blog series I began called the playlist project where I will analyze different styles and movements of music from different perspectives in order to satisfy my own curiosity as well as to offer a different, hopefully unique perspective.
There is a very real chance I might discover what others have believed for a long time, or I might uncover the hidden truth behind the myth. Anyways it will be a fun exorcise in musical exploration.